The Lapin Agile
At the turn of the XIXth century, the hill welcomed one after the other, the elite of painting, popular song, theatre and its fertile nature served as a cocoon for all sorts of creative. Artists, writers, composers and poets, they all tried the Montmartre life and most of the time, took to it to the point of staying there, as if under a charm. It was a frail equilibrium between the area and its artists who drew from it their inspiration and in return gave it its elixir of life. One came for debauchery, fun and heated political debate which took place in famous cabarets like the Lapin Agile.
First known under the name ‘à ma campagne’ (to my country) then ‘au rendez-vous des assassins” (the assassins’ meeting place), the bar opposite the vineyard belonged to the writer, Aristide Bruant. It only took off when Bruant left it to Frédéric Gérard, a shady cellist whose eccentricity made him a semi-mystical character at the time. At the corner of the Rue des Saules, you find yourself facing a pink house: the Cabaret of Père Frédé, as they used to call him, carpeted with ivy and the subject of many canvases. The sign drawn by A.Gilles, which still hangs there, gave its odd name to the cabaret through wordplay. To name only a few, Picasso, Modigliani, Apollinaire and Braque all became usuals of the place in the late XIXth century and later, no other than Brassens and Nougaro came there to find inspiration.
Postcards
And when they weren’t there, night birds from Montmartre were in the Moulin Rouge which hardly needs to be introduced. In the memory of La Goulue, the party goes on in this mill that never ground anything else than money, according to a local saying mocking the circumstances in which the cabaret was created. Renoir immortalised the place with his “Bal au Moulin Rouge” (1890) and “La Goulue arrivant au moulin rouge”. He also painted “Au Moulin de la Galette” in 1889: another survivor of the thirty mills that once occupied the hill and where the owner used to offer a pancake when the dancing was over. The place still boasts the last two mills of Montmartre: “le Radet et le Blute fin” and the “Mire du Nord”.
In a genuine effervescence for art and culture, the streets of Montmartre saw the painter Suzanne Valadon pose for Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, and saw her painter-son Utrillo be born ; the Chat Noir cabaret with its Steinlein posters be opened and shut on the Boulevard Rochechouart; the caricaturist Caran d’Ache (Emmanuel Poiré) invent shadow theatre. But while you are there, don’t forget to visit, for its quality exhibitions, the Musée de Montmartre, a XVIIth century manor where Renoir, Raoul Dufy, Valadon and Utrillo all lived. The Espace Dali gathers works from the surrealist Italian painter. And the Studio 28, independent cinema immortalised in the movie “Amelie from Montmartre” had its décors painted by J.Cocteau.
Tremble in front of the Cabaret du Néant with its grave-tables, skull-glasses and skeleton-lampshades. Dive in the past at the Maison Rose restaurant, rue de l’Abreuvoir, and at the Château des Brouillards which was successively a ball, a dairy and a bourgeois residence evoked by Gérard de Nerval and Guy de Maupassant. Track Dalida in the rue d’Orchampt, Van Gogh in the rue Lepic, Vian and Céline who all lived in Montmartre. Looking for inspiration and Bohemia, they left their marks on the hill, giving work and material to chroniclers and art amateurs. Let yourself be swallowed up by the legends of this working-class and yet yuppie area, Parisian and yet rustic, appreciate every corner charged up with history and hurtle down the stairs, day dreaming, to finally step back into the present moment.
By Alice Cannet
Published : April 29, 2010
Photo credit : © S.I Montmartre
